October is rolling along, although someone has forgotten to tell Mother Nature that we are will into fall – Tucson has had record highs in the upper 90s, even over 100, so far this month.

However, with each passing day, it gets closer to Saturday Night Genealogy Fun! The weekend has arrived with this week’s challenge:

1)   Share something unexpected that you’ve found while researching an ancestor. 

Recently, I decided to go back and review early Brasher families in my husband’s family tree. We’re talking early 1700s in Baltimore County, Maryland.

I had some very specific dates from St. George’s Parish, but it has been so many years since I worked on the family (long before digital images) and I had a very questions about my data.

First, and most important on my list, was verifying the name of Thomas Brasher’s 1726 bride, Sarah. Was her maiden name CONSTANCE or CONSTANT? Some online queries even asked if it might have been CUSTIS, albeit poorly spelled.

Since I found no original image of the marriage record online, I contacted the Maryland State Archives to ask if someone could access the original record to determine the correct spelling.

My surprise came only two hours later (really fast turn around time from their help desk) when a PDF file was attached to my reply.

It was a 700+ page file of ALL the St. George Parish church records from that era, covering well over a century of births, baptisms, marriages, deaths and burials.

That kept me busy for a while!

However, the surname is so unusual in the parish that only Sarah and her father’s second family were found. The other records all called him John CONSTANT, so Constant it is.

If you have Maryland ancestors and need assistance, the Maryland State Archives is A+ in my book!

Thanks, Randy, for another SNGF challenge.